Security

ComputerWorldIndependent

Facebook looks to revamp password recovery by supplanting email

Forgot your password? Well, Facebook wants to help you recover your internet account.

The company is releasing an open source protocol that will let third-party sites recover user accounts through Facebook.

Typically, when people forget their password to a site, they’re forced to answer a security question or send a password reset request to their email. But these methods of account recovery can be vulnerable to hacking, said Facebook security engineer Brad Hill.

He recalled a time when he was granted permission to break into an online bank account. To do so, he took advantage of the password reset questions.

“It asked me what my favorite color was, and it let me guess as many times as I wanted,” he said Monday, during a presentation at the USENIX Enigma 2017 security conference.

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ComputerWorldIndependent

Police lost 8 years of evidence in ransomware attack

Police in Cockrell Hill, a community in southwest Dallas, admitted to losing digital evidence from as far back as 2009 after the department’s server was compromised with ransomware.

Cockrell Hill Police Department Chief Stephen Barlag said, “As a result, all bodycam video, some photos, some in-car video, and some police department surveillance video were lost.”

Immediately, the police blamed Russian hackers, but Barlag later told WFAA that experts told him it “more likely originated in Ukraine.” The official press release, however, states, “It is unknown for certain where the virus originated from.”

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(Insider Story)

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ComputerWorldIndependent

Ransomware disrupts Washington DC's CCTV system

Around 70 percent of the cameras hooked up to the police’s closed-circuit TV (CCTV) system in Washington were reportedly unable to record footage for several days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration due to a ransomware attack.

The attack affected 123 of the 187 network video recorders that form the city’s CCTV system, The Washington Post reported Saturday. Each of these devices is used to store video footage captured by up to four cameras installed in public spaces.

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ComputerWorldIndependent

German consumer groups sue WhatsApp over privacy policy changes

WhatsApp’s privacy policy change allowing Facebook to target advertising at its users has landed the company in a German court.

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBZ) has filed suit against WhatsApp in the Berlin regional court, alleging that the company collects and stores data illegally and passes it on to Facebook, the federation said Monday.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in October 2014, but it wasn’t until August 2016 that WhatsApp said it would modify its privacy policy to allow it to share lists of users’ contacts with Facebook. The move made it possible to match WhatsApp accounts with Facebook ones where users had registered a phone number, giving the parent company more data with which to make new friend suggestions and another way to target advertising.

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